Kaizen Essay

970 Words2 Pages

The word Kaizen is defined as continuous improvement in personal, home, social, and work life. Kaizen is a Japanese word composed of the words kai and zen in which kai means change and zen means good or better. When Kaizen is applied to the work life, it involves everyone in the organization from workers, to managers then supervisors, and to top management. In the workplace, the term kaizen refers to continual and gradual improvement. The kaizen approach is not only about improvement, but also getting specific outcomes.
Kaizen costing was originated in Japan as a new cost management concept to help survive struggling businesses after World War II. Due to the rise in oil prices, Japanese companies were looking for new ways to reduce costs. Kaizen costing is a process that focuses on reducing the costs of existing products and processes …show more content…

In addition, wasteful processes are reduced, and thus reduce the waste use of materials. With kaizen costing, customer requirements are placed at the forefront of the company. Each product and service is focused on the needs of the customer instead of the company.
Since the concept of Kaizen requires everyone in the company to participate, teamwork and purposefulness increase tremendously as a result of people being able to think and contribute beyond their needs of their specific department. But most importantly, long and short term goals of the company can be easily identified to ensure that employees, systems, and products achieve these goals.
Even though kaizen costing has numerous advantages, it also has a few disadvantages as well. These disadvantages can be serious if the company does not fully understand how this concept works. Without fully understanding kaizen costing, it can become every disastrous to the company and ultimately cost the company thousands of dollars instead of saving the company

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